"Governmental encouragement does not order men to believe that the false is true, it merely makes them indifferent to the issue of truth or falsehood."-Ayn Rand.

Sunday, December 17, 2006

Of Superheros and Scientists

When I see a steady diet of global warming and other junk science articles in the Detroit papers, I sometimes think mankind needs a new superhero, say, Caveat Man. Caveat Man would fly to all the papers and wire services and place caveats at the end of science articles.

Like the Detroit Free Press article of Dec. 7th titled "In the Alps, weather is warmest in years." Caveat Man would write "There are two facts you need to know. 1) Weather is not climate. Don't confuse the two. 2) The authors admit such warming has happened twice before though slightly cooler than now, CO2 didn't cause it then so what did and how do they know the same forcings aren't causing it now? They don't."

And another article in the same paper on Dec. 13th titled "Study: Ice-free Arctic summer by '40." Caveat Man would point out that all this is pure speculation based on the assumption that the Arctic will keep on warming at the current rate for the next 33 years. He would also show that there is no evidence in the factual, historical, observational record to support the idea that the warming will continue. He might even point to European scientists who claim that the arctic will be ice free by 2080 which is 40 years later than the study just mentioned above. Yet these same people want us to trust them in that they know what the climate will be like in 100 years!!

There also was a story "Neatherlands warmest in 300 years" in one of the papers. Caveat Man would have alerted readers that 300 years ago was in the Little Ice Age so it should not be a surprise that it's warmer now.

Since we don't have a real Caveat Man, a reasonable facsimile thereof is:

Steven Milloy at Junk Science.com posts on the Top Ten Junk Science Moments of 2006.

While I was in Steven's archives I found this video on probability and uncertainty by Peter Donnelly. TEDTalks (Stats) I found this 22 minute long video interesting because I'm now reading "Fooled By Randomness" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

About Me

Born in 1942. Went 12 yrs to a Catholic school. Am now a student of Objectivism. Spent most of my career as a shift supervisor in plastic injection molding factories. Have three sons and six grand kids.